


Escape

by Viridian5



Series: Time and Again [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Dark Past, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-12-29
Updated: 1999-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:24:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter how hard he tries, Turlough can't get away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Escape

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "Earthshock" and the whole Turlough run of episodes, with vague stuff for a number of other episodes. Don't worry; I explain as I go.
> 
> I found Turlough unusually interesting from the very first episode I saw him in, one in which he barely had more than ten lines, "The Five Doctors." I eventually saw all of his episodes, out of order, though. &lt;g&gt; He was often reprehensible--cowardly, treacherous, ruthless, caustic, manipulative--but he was so twitchy and had those wide, terrified, abused child's eyes.... It all made his acts of bravery and kindness matter more somehow, made me root for him to be better. Then he picked up a laser rifle in "Warriors of the Deep" and proved to be one hell of a shot, and his talent for hiding started to have an entirely different spin. The show kept Turlough an exceedingly mysterious character, not even bothering to give you a hint of who he truly was and where he was from until his farewell episode. "Planet of Fire" revealed that he had been a soldier on the losing side of his planet's civil war who'd been branded, then exiled to an Earth English boys school. That's pretty much it. Everything else in this story is me blueskying based on his behavior.

Turlough woke up in darkness, choking back a scream. Shuddering, he slowed his breathing and tried to remember his English. His throat hurt, so he must have been giving information or repeating his name, rank, and identification code in Trion in his nightmares again. Maybe he'd managed to muffle it with his pillow.

Not that it seemed to make a difference. Hippo didn't understand Trion, and--no matter how quiet Turlough tried to be--he always heard and came over. Soon there would be a weight settling at the side of the bed, soft breath, soft voice saying, "It's all right, Turlough. You're safe; you're still here." If Turlough managed to regain his facility with the native language, he would say something about the school being only another kind of hell. He would be answered with soft, hungry lips against his face, soft, clutching hands at his back, mostly soft body pressed to his....

Having Turlough nightmare-shaken always made Hippo more avid and aggressive, but Turlough could hardly blame him. A pudgy, myopic lapdog looking for an owner, Hippo was a follower and an object of contempt so often to so many that he of course grabbed any opportunity to take control. On those nights, the pet switched roles with his master.

To his disgust, Turlough was aroused. //Pathetic. Fantasizing about _Hippo_ of all people. Am I actually missing him?// So what if he often associated terror with sex? That connection had started long before Hippo Ibbotson.

Turlough had stopped resisting Ibbotson on these nights long ago, too scared, too desperate to forget for a while, too lonely, too pathetic to find the strength to refuse the companionship being offered. Besides, the upperclassmen had taught Hippo even better than the processing camp guards had taught Turlough.

It amazed Turlough how much the school had in common with prison in the use and abuse of power.

But Hippo didn't appear tonight. "Ibbotson?" Turlough whispered. No answer, no breathing from the other side of the room.

Turlough heard a faint machine hum and felt a vibration running through him. His ship? Had it all--that last terrible defeat, his capture and interrogation, his exile to that backwater planet Earth and its too cold, too wet England--just been a horrible dream?

Or was he doomed to live it all over again?

Turlough swallowed down terror, his constant companion, and cleared his mind. The hum and vibration didn't match the ship he'd served on.

He was in the TARDIS.

Someone had put him to bed, taking off only his jacket and shoes. His tie had been loosened but still hung around his neck; maybe he'd started to come to as that someone had been removing it. He put the thought of being unconscious in some unknown someone's hands out of his mind. No sense in obsessing over what couldn't be changed.

//Maybe I'll take that to heart someday.//

He still wore the uniform of the Earth school he hated. Some vestige of the younger, idealistic, immortal, invincible Turlough who'd been eager to serve and give his life for the Cause found a uniform, any uniform, comforting. That one had somehow kept his idealism and innocence intact through countless campaigns, epic slaughters, and was disgusted by the mewling coward who'd supplanted him.

The feeling was mutual. //The Earthlings have a name for a person who can watch others die in a variety of terrible ways and not let it bother him. It's "sociopath."//

//You must be desperate to be calling on Earth notions for support. You nearly laughed yourself sick that first day in their physics class alone.//

//Where were you when the Republicans used the neural net on us? We were just a junior ensign commander; we had no sensitive information we could give to make them stop.//

//As if they did that for information and not just vengeance. The civil war had gone on too long.//

//Exactly. And who made the necessary compromises, survived all the abuse, to keep us alive? Me.//

//Is living really so precious, so all-important, that it justifies sacrificing honor, pride, and all your ideals?//

Turlough had no answer.

He put his hand over his upper arm and shivered as he traced the raised scar tissue of his exile's brand through his shirt. The sight and feel of it had done alarming things to Hippo's lust. "Did it hurt to get? What does it mean?" He'd answered, yes, it had been agonizing, and it means I can never go home again.... Hippo had made comforting noises about Turlough's dead fictitious parents-- the Earth cover story, although for all Turlough knew his father might actually be as dead as his mother in truth by now--then traced the two overlapping triangles with his tongue. It didn't help that Trions had a major nerve cluster in that spot....

Turlough had to get out of this room, out of bed. He put his shoes on and walked out into the soft white light of the corridor. That room.... Few of the Doctor's companions had died while traveling with him, but Tegan had given Turlough the room that had belonged to the most recent one who had, Adric. She hadn't told Turlough how Adric had left them; he had to find it out for himself. Most of the time it made him smile bitterly, but tonight it also made him feel more unsettled and off-balance.

Tonight. Turlough was still thinking in planet-bound terms, still following Earth's sun in his sleep patterns. He had yet to completely readjust his sleep cycles to what passed for the TARDIS's official schedule; saving all of time and space didn't make it easy to keep a regular bedtime.

Turlough wasn't home, he wasn't on his ship, he wasn't in the camp, and he wasn't on Earth at that wretched school, though the Doctor and the TARDIS's crew spent an inordinate amount of time on Earth. Especially in England, it seemed.

He was here and as free as he would ever get.

Turlough ended up in the control room, his favorite place in the TARDIS. The Doctor had a console panel open and was tinkering, as always. "Do you ever sleep?" Turlough asked.

The Doctor stood to face him and smiled. He did a lot of smiling. Soft white light shone off his blond hair like a halo. "I try not to. You miss so much that way."

Who knew if the Doctor told the truth or exaggerated? Anything was possible with him.

Turlough couldn't help liking him and distrusted that immensely. The Gallifreyan was so full of good humor, yet he had to have seen more atrocities in his centuries-long lifespan than Turlough could imagine. How did he retain his optimism and still believe the best of people? He somehow hadn't learned yet that there was no sight, no atrocity, no lie, no betrayal, no pain, no compromise so terrible that a worse one couldn't come along later. Horror was a bottomless pit.

Turlough felt centuries older than the Doctor, who looked only slightly older than Turlough. The Doctor was good looking in a bland way; he appeared soft, inexperienced, and inoffensive.

But the Doctor's voice often sang with a self-assured veteran's tone of experience and command that made Turlough inwardly snap to attention. And hate himself for it.

The Doctor never asked him questions about himself. Found him at an Earth school for adolescent males but did nothing more than raise an eyebrow slightly as he had demonstrated technical knowledge far beyond Earth's paltry means. Seemed to have known what the Black Guardian's crystal signified, yet casually tossed it back to him. Accepted him. Claimed to believe his every word, lie or truth, and offered no judgment during any of his small betrayals. Trusted him not to follow the Black Guardian's commands to murder and sabotage, trusting him with his life. Rarely chastised him.

People thought Turlough to be manipulative, but the Doctor made him look like a rank amateur. All of those things had somehow forced him to be better than himself. He hated that.

"I'm sorry you didn't sleep well," the Doctor said. His kind, mellow sounding voice reached Turlough in deeply buried places.

Turlough glanced away from the concern in those dark eyes. "Who put me to bed?"

"I did. Our recent outing was a bit more strenuous than usual and seemed to have taken its toll on you."

Yes, more personal jeopardy, more wandering or running lost through ships or caves, more deadly and frightening adversaries than usual, and with all of creation at stake, as always. "A bit more strenuous" than most of their "outings," indeed. It seemed that they'd stepped in the middle of one catastrophe after another of late, with no time to catch their breath between meddlings. How long did you have to do this to start seeing that as normal?

"That was very kind. Thank you."

Turlough glanced up and saw that the Doctor looked even more concerned for him. His usual hyper-awareness of his appearance and how he could use it went online as he gave a thought to what he must look like right now: tie undone, clothing rumpled, hair mussed. Always a bit too thin and gangly, all narrow planes and angles, a physique that had helped him climb through enemy ventilation systems. The TARDIS's white light always gave his pale skin a sickly tone and bleached out his gray-blue eyes and ginger hair. Poor child, kept up too late and nightmare-stricken.

People made allowances for youth, especially injured youth.

Turlough offered a shaky smile, put his hands in his pockets, and moved closer. Sometimes you had to give to receive. A smile and a soft phrase.... "I had a nightmare. Silly, really." The voice came out perfect: higher-pitched, slightly awkward, trying to be brave and offhand but failing. //Pride? What's that?//

The Doctor put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. That was it. Turlough turned and put his face against the Doctor's neck. Warm here. The hand tightened but didn't pull him away. He sighed and snuggled. He wouldn't be the first to take advantage of that kind nature and blinding drive to help others.

The oddly amplified, strangely-tempoed pulse under the skin shook Turlough until he remembered that the Gallifreyan had two hearts. To his surprise, the Doctor smelled mostly like tea leaves. He grinned; that took a love of Earth too far. Good smell, though, and he actually liked tea too. Under that lurked a slightly bitter, charged scent, like ozone. He put his lips against the skin and felt a slight tingle. His tongue darted out.

"Turlough." Sounding a bit alarmed, the Doctor tried to gently move him away, but he clung. "What are you doing?"

More talking. Not good. //Maybe I acted _too_ young. Damn his morals, if so. Everyone has to be younger than he is.//

Turlough loosened his clench-fingered grip on the Doctor's vest. Sounding brave and considerate again, but with a calculated undertone of embarrassment, Turlough said, "I'm... sorry. I was... looking for something. My roommate helped me through nights like this, calmed me. I'm sorry I disturbed you. I'll leave now." He let go and started to step away.

The Doctor held on this time. "You don't have to go. I meant to ask if you understood what you were doing."

Oh, yes. "And what am I doing?" Turlough asked lightly, with a smile.

"Turlough."

"I want to get close to you." //I know you see through me a bit. How far does it go?

//How can you know me at all? How can you know me when I don't know myself?//

Turlough kissed the corner of the Doctor's mouth. When that didn't ignite a protest, he started a proper kiss and melted as the Doctor pulled him closer. That press of body to body, the pulse and throb of the engine thrumming through him, brought him back to fond memories of crew assignations belowdecks, hot and furtive.

Turlough needed this to be less gentle, but he didn't know if the Doctor would be willing to do that. He couldn't seem too experienced for fear of disgusting the Doctor, but he also couldn't be too inexperienced, since the Doctor's type never looked too kindly on despoiling virgins. The suffering he undertook for a lover....

Then the Doctor _did_ become more aggressive, more demanding, and it scared Turlough. //It terrifies you when you get what you want? Pathetic. You're a disgrace to your bloodline.// How did the Doctor know? He knew far too much already, but that could come from observation, conjecture, logic. It meant that Turlough had given away more than he'd realized, which rankled, but would be understandable. But what the Doctor had just done.... The thought that he could read minds, see all of Turlough's secrets, terrified. The Eternal, Captain Wrack, had found it difficult to navigate the twists of Turlough's mind, but she succeeded eventually. But her opinion didn't matter like his did....

Worse, Turlough realized that the Doctor was moving them, herding him, over to the door. Quietly, subtly. "Where are we going?" he asked as casually as he could.

The Doctor sounded utterly reasonable. They always did. "Somewhere more comfortable."

"I'm comfortable here." Turlough would sleep in the control room if he could. Here he felt safe and as much in command of his own destiny as he had in ages. //Foolish.//

The Doctor stroked his hair and face, which felt nice except that he did it the way a person would touch an abused animal to gentle it. //Before you send it off to slaughter.// Turlough felt tears at the back of his eyes, and he couldn't say if they came from anger or grief.

Turlough knew he was mentally crippled, knew it in everything he felt and nearly every decision he made. Knew it for who he had become. He'd gone through the ritual Brendon School jumping-in rather well, his new self managing to fight just enough to avoid being labeled an _easy_ target. But one night one of the boys had attacked him unexpectedly, and for some reason something had slipped through the cracks. His instinctive counterattack would have killed another Trion; only the differences of human physiology had saved the boy's life. Then the camp's conditioning had reasserted itself and dropped him, retching and convulsing in blinding pain, to the floor. It left him helpless when the rest of the group nearly beat him to death in revenge right afterward.

Turlough's "solicitor," the Trion agent on Earth, smoothed everything out, with the headmaster's full participation. Two boys in a coma, especially given the circumstances, looked bad for the school. When Turlough came to, two days before his attacker did, his keeper took him away for a period of time he still couldn't remember. He came back knowing that nothing would ever slip through again. His cowardice was assured.

At least the boys had mostly left him alone after that attempted homicide.

But now the conditioning was starting to fail again. //I picked up that laser rifle, took rear-guard and later point, and shot to kill with very little trouble in that sea-base. It felt good... aside from having two parts of my brain screaming at one another. It gives me some element of choice?//

Who needed all these doubts and questions? Turlough was tired of trying to figure out who he should be for the Doctor. He could go back to his room and take care of himself since he was used to doing everything on his own anyway. While he couldn't even entirely trust himself, it was safer, saner, than trusting anyone else. If the Doctor was what he claimed to be, he'd take a no without reprisal.

Turlough backed away and out of the room. "This was a mistake. I'm going back to bed." He started to walk to his room.

The Doctor kept pace and looked concerned, but something about his expression suggested that he saw Turlough as an interesting puzzle to solve. "How can I help you if you won't tell me anything?"

Turlough turned the same hard, blank face he'd used on other interrogators on the Doctor. "I'm sorry, but I don't need your help, and I certainly don't need questions." //Some pride left after all.//

The Doctor's good-natured look didn't slip at all. "No questions then."

"Just like that."

"Just like that."

"Why?"

The Doctor grinned. "Oh, so I can't ask you questions, but you can ask me?"

"You don't have to answer them." //Brilliant. Why don't you hand him all the keys and save some time?//

"All right then. I will no longer persist in asking questions because you don't want me to. I like having you around, so I won't give you any reason to leave."

"Impossible. I am unpleasant."

"Yes, you do work very hard at that, don't you?"

Turlough's hand briefly itched for a rifle. "You can be terribly patronizing at times."

"So I've been told. You're not all that unpleasant, you know. While brandishing nothing more than a hat rack, you once held off a small army bent on killing me."

Turlough had to smile. "I'm still surprised it worked."

"See?"

"That's another question."

"Terribly sorry."

"It won't work."

"What won't-- I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're trying to manipulate me into a better, more compliant state of mind."

"Not at all. I'm merely pointing out your numerous good qualities. Your assistance has been invaluable, and you've kept Tegan safe more than once. Besides, I can talk to you about the TARDIS, and I can hardly do that with her."

"Time's up. We've reached my room."

"So-- So we have." The cheeriness fell away from the Doctor's face, showing a deep sadness. Grief?

Turlough watched in confused fascination until he remembered whose room this had been. Few of the Doctor's many companions had died while traveling with him, but Adric had. Did the Doctor feel the guilt, the blame, for that death? It seemed that he did. //And if they don't die, they leave him sooner or later anyway.//

The grief and guilt reached Turlough where light-heartedness and compliments had failed. He took the Doctor's arm and started to walk further down the infinite hallway, pulling the Gallifreyan along. The Doctor let him, even leaned against him a bit.

"I thought... that my time was up," the Doctor said softly.

"You're a Time Lord; you have plenty of time."

They walked for a while until the Doctor said, "You know, we could walk forever. I don't know if you're up for that."

"How large is the TARDIS anyway?"

"I'm not sure. We had to jettison some sections recently."

"Never mind. We can stop here." Turlough pulled the Doctor through a door at random and turned on a light.

The Doctor smiled. "This is the closet."

"So it is."

It seemed to go on forever. Male, female, and neutral clothing from an unending multitude of planets and dimensions hung everywhere in a riot of colors, textures, and scents. Sometimes Tegan came in here and didn't return for hours.

Turlough turned, and something about the expression on the Doctor's face made him lean in for a kiss. It felt like more equal footing this time. He soon found himself firmly kissed and held, with his back against a wall. No extruding roundels on the walls here, fortunately. Like this, he could feel the engine pulsing through his back, through his feet. Comforting, that.

"Tell me what you want me to do," the Doctor said.

Tea leaves and ozone again, like smelling England and time itself, as Turlough nipped at the Doctor's neck before he tried to pull his mind back to deciphering words. "What?" How long had it been since it mattered to anyone what he _wanted_ to do?

"I'd like to know what you like."

Turlough's heart pounded. The Doctor's near-question felt like a black hole pulling at him, like being sucked into space by explosive decompression. "I don't know."

The Doctor replied with a comforting smile, followed by a comforting kiss and the words: "Then I'll improvise."

Turlough could never figure out what color the Doctor's deep-set eyes were beyond "dark," but now they seemed darker still as the Time Lord knelt before him. Ibbotson had done similar for him, but the Doctor bended knee to _no one_. The thought of him like this now....

The Doctor's clever fingers made short work of the zipper. Turlough's head fell back against the wall at the first feel of the Time Lord's mouth on him and those exploring fingers, stroking, rolling. His own fingers buried themselves in the Doctor's straight, silken blond hair. He couldn't stop himself from shaking at the pleasure, couldn't stop himself from expecting pain to follow. He was in prison, in school, in prison; they were the same....

"Are you all right?" the Doctor asked after pulling away a little.

//No, I'm scared.// The question and his state of mind almost made him say that aloud. Instead he answered, "Yes, I'm fine."

Turlough must have done a good impersonation of "fine," because the Doctor went back to what he'd been doing. This time Turlough ignored distinctions of pleasure and pain and drowned in sensation, letting it blank out his mind. Escape at last. Lost in feeling, he rode the wave until it peaked and crashed in a spray of white fire.

Turlough came to on the floor with a brocaded cape draped over him and himself draped on the Doctor's side. The Doctor stroked his hair and regarded him with a worried and puzzled expression that disappeared the moment he realized the subject of that look was awake.

"Is something wrong?" Turlough asked.

"Not at all. I've just never been so good that I knocked my lover out before."

//Time for a distraction.// "I'll try to return the favor."

"Unnecessary." The Doctor took on a rueful look in response to Turlough's suspicious one. "It's been a long time. I didn't last very long."

//Lying.// "I'm torn between feeling arrogance on my own part and pity for you."

"You're a talented young man. Why not both?"

"Then I shall."

This had been a tactical error of major proportions. He'd earned no favors here and utterly failed to provide a distraction. It seemed that he could now look forward to the Doctor looking even closer, studying him even harder, as if he were a particularly delicate and complicated experiment. At least he had achieved something close to the boneless, contented, unthinking state he'd hoped for. //Damn you for giving it with one hand and spoiling it with the other, Doctor.// But he felt warm and comfortable in a physical sense, to the point where he might be able to sleep peacefully now.

"I don't need to move. You could sleep like this if you wish," the Doctor said.

//And have you studying me all the while. Right now I can't bring myself to care.// "Then I shall."

Turlough briefly amused himself with images of how Tegan would react if she found them like this, then let warmth, the comforting pulse of the TARDIS, and the scent of tea leaves and ozone pull him down into a sleep that he hoped wouldn't be darkened by memories.

  

### End


End file.
